Qi thinker of the yin-yang school who taught that dynasties rise and fall by the cycle of the Five Powers and that the known world is one of nine great continents
Mural guide
A thatched pavilion open on three sides stands among tall bamboo; one person sits with their back turned at the veranda rail beside a zither and a stack of bamboo slips, while a stone path runs to a calm pond reflecting clouds and distant hills.
Zou Yan was a man of Qi who lived after Mencius. The Records of the Grand Historian (Shiji) says that, seeing rulers grow extravagant and indifferent to virtue, he studied the waxing and waning of yin and yang and wrote over a hundred thousand words. He taught that dynasties succeed one another as each of the Five Powers, earth, wood, metal, fire and water, overcomes the one before, and that the land the classicists took for the whole world, which he called the Red Region of the Divine Continent, was only one eighty-first of it. Honoured in Qi, he was met outside the city by King Hui of Wei and treated with deference by the Lord of Pingyuan in Zhao, and King Zhao of Yan swept the road before him and built the Jieshi Palace to study under him. His books are lost, but the First Emperor of Qin adopted his theory and claimed the power of water for his dynasty.
Life and times
UnknownBornZhouQi thinker of the late Warring States
Zou Yan on the turning of the Five Virtues and the nine regions
Warring States period
The Records of the Grand Historian places Zou Yan after Mencius. Seeing rulers grow ever more extravagant and unable to honor virtue, he cited the turning of the Five Virtues from the first division of heaven and earth onward, holding that each age had its fitting way of rule. He also said that outside the central land there were nine regions like the Divine Land of Chixian, which together make up the nine provinces. In Liang, King Hui met him at the outskirts and received him as a guest of equal rank; in Zhao, Lord Pingyuan walked beside him at an angle in respect; in Yan, King Zhao swept the road ahead of him with a broom and built the Jieshi Palace, where he went in person to study under him.
Zhou